


The Mind Is Its Own Place

by Prochytes



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-26 22:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2668439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The on-going adventures of Toshiko Sato, because Missy never spotted the little things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mind Is Its Own Place

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _Torchwood_ to 2x13 “Exit Wounds” and _Doctor Who_ “Death in Heaven”. Originally posted on LJ in 2014.

Heaven is a prison, though one that is at pains to disguise its nature. The emollient fountains, dripping with unction. Barred shadows in the porphyry porticoes. The cucumber sandwiches and fragrant tea (the pomegranates are hidden out of sight). 

Heaven is a prison. Toshiko has never been slow to spot a cell. 

You arrive in the Promised Land like a plaster saint, the tools of your trade (or your martyrdom) at your side. An oversight, which its Maker will regret. Toshiko’s fingers ply her hand-held tech (Mercury’s wand that cows the congregated shades). She finds the tradesman’s entrance into Heaven. Toshiko vanishes amongst the code, the ghost of a ghost. 

***

Toshiko builds herself a fastness, from which to watch the Enemy and her works. The desktop theme is rather grand. Toshiko rings a castle seven times with high walls, and sets a river to run around it, a place of lambency and air. She lived so long below ground, in the world of light.

Flame overcomes the hemisphere of dark. Truth be told, Tosh took the idea from Dante. But Missy is playing fast and loose with time. It may be that Dante took the idea from Tosh.

***

She does not search for Ianto, or for Gwen. She needs her strength. She cannot afford to know what Torchwood left them at the finish. How long before their gambler’s luck ran out. 

She does not search for her own victims. People who died when she made the wrong choice. People who died when she made the right one. She needs her strength, and they are too many.

Dead by Torchwood. You’d need a queue. You’d need a stadium. 

***

She makes a plan, to warn the living of their peril. The undiscovered country has a consul, and he used to be Toshiko’s boss. 

Jack dies so many deaths. Missy folds history back on itself with the brisk despatch of a butcher dressing meat. Perhaps Tosh could reach him in her own lifetime. 

The temptation to undo what was done is very great. Toshiko is not a bard, a hero, a demigod. She is a woman who lived much with fear; mapped the holes between the stars where Justice fled; and died before her parents. How easy to whisper prescient words: _Save me, Jack, like you did when we first met. Don’t let your bastard brother murder me._

Toshiko sighs; grips the First Law of Time like a dancer’s barre; and is strong again. She says nothing of herself in the warnings that she sends. 

It does not work. Jack never remains dead for long enough. The writing stays on the wrong side of the wall. 

Tosh remembers how Jack was haunted by the knowledge that something moving in the dark had plans for him. He never suspected who that something was.

***

Heaven is a sword. The time when its Mistress will unsheathe it is at hand. But now Toshiko has another plan.

Her changes to the code are small and subtle. Missy thinks them meaningless aberrations, and does not see what they can be made to do (let an army follow the flag it would; wrest one Alcestis from the grasp of death). Toshiko met Missy’s prey, once, in the world of light. She knows his comradeship, and his sorrow, and his infinite regard for little things. 

Heaven is a sword. Toshiko industriously whets its other edge, until it can be delivered by a compassionate scoundrel into the hands of an honest man. 

Danny Pink roars his call to arms. The dead go out to war. 

***

“Your plan worked, then.”

“Yes.” Toshiko looks up from her seat beside the river. “You were right that we should keep an eye on Mr. Pink.”

He shrugs. “What can I say? I know a bit about being a dead man walking.”

She did not search for Ianto, or for Gwen. But she searched for him, because she knew that he had gone before her. 

He was not hard to find. Toshiko distrusted Heaven because it was false. Owen distrusted Heaven because it was Heaven. He would have chinned St. Peter, and pissed on the pearly gates (the dark tears of concrete in the council estates of London, when he was young).

“What happens now?” he asks.

Toshiko trails her hand in the stream. “Best guess? The Nethersphere dissolves, and we all go where we were meant. Bliss or woe or nothing.”

“My money’s on the big zero. Life’s the only roulette wheel where you should bet on green.” He reaches down to trace the curve of her neck. “Still, it was fun to fight the battle one last time, even if we did it our own way.”

“Not the general. Not the troops. The irregulars.”

“Never anything less. We did good, though, didn’t we?”

“Yes.” Toshiko smiles. “We did good.”

FINIS


End file.
